Here is the next chapter.
Disclaimer: I, Elana Vital, do not own any of the terms or characters from the Invader Zim TV show. I will however claim the characters of Bobby and Sally Bledsoe as my own.
Bobby's face glowed blue by the light of the computer screen. He bit his lip as excitement bubbled within his chest. Mom was asleep upstairs, and the bullfrogs jug-o-rumm, jug-o-rummed outside by the front pond. All the lights were out.
He could bearly keep himself from shouting out with anticipation, as he glanced at the time on the bottom right corner of the computer screen. 12:45. Only fifteen more minutes, he told himself. He checked his email to kill time, deleting advertisements for numberous collegic programs, student loans, and stuff like that. He'd been elligable academically to attend college for about two months now, but he decided to put off college for the time being. He told his mom he didn't want to go until he was at least 18 months old, because he didn't feel he was mature enough to handle the pressures and responsibilities of college life yet.
He knew his mother like the back of his hand. He knew she wasn't too hot on the idea of him going away for college at 14, especially since he was so...different. She would worry endlessly about how all the other people were treating him. But that wasn't the real reason why he decided to wait. Before going off to "start a life", he needed to know more about himself. He knew Sally wasn't his real mother. He knew he grew up faster and differently from other kids. How could he start a life, when he didn't even know where his own life began? He knew he wasn't human. What was he?
Sally had done her best to give him everything he ever needed or wanted. But she couldn't give him what he needed most...and identity.
Whenever he asked her anything about himself, she'd always only tell the same old story; that he came to her one night when she was walking home from work. She really didn't know anything more then that. He had his own suspicions, but he could never come up with anything for certain. Until recently...
Late one night he was surfing the web, when his stumbled across an archived photo from a Mysterious Mysteries webring. It was pretty blurry, but he could somewhat make out the image. It was a picture of a kid in a red striped shirt standing next to a tree. He had a horrible expression on his face, and his long tongue was hanging out. But it was his face that caught Bobby's eye.
It was distinctively, decidedly, and unmistakeably...green.
And his eyes were bright red.
What's more, Bobby could sort of make out two long antennae sprouting out from the top of the kid's hairless, earless head.
Bobby's three-fingered hand shakily ran over his own green features, his own long antennae, then touched the screen tentatively.
"Oh my god..."
The photo had been labelled "Another Alien Hoax Video taken by derranged UFO and Paranormal enthusiast"...UFO??
Bobby quickly clicked on the link to see the video and watched. The audio was terrible, and the images were constantly zooming in and out of focus. But here was what he could see from it:
The camera zooms in on a black booted foot, the a finger. Then a boy's face with a distinctive forehead, spikey black hair, and round glasses flashes onto the screen.
"Test...One, two, one, two, three...Okay, here I go," the boy says, and the camera jerks about wildly as muffled sounds of running footsteps can be heard. The running stops, then the camera blurrs into focus. It zooms in on a small, odd-looking house with grotesque looking garden gnomes and oversized flamingoes littering the front yard. It's night time.
The camera jerks, and everything goes black momentarily as the boy's voice could be heard yelling something unintellegable.
"What do you think you're doing, Dib-Stink!?" says another voice, and the green-faced kid's image comes onto the screen, zooming in and out shakily.
"Aha! I got you on camera, Zim! Now everyone will know you're-" the first boy's begins to say, but is interrupted by a crash and a horrible shriek.
"Ohhhh, you disgusting little-!" the green faced kid says, and the camera falls into the grass. All you can see is the ceramic feet of a garden troll.
"No! Wait!! Stop! Stop it, Gir!!" comes the voice of the green kid. Then the screen goes black.
Bobby had watched the video over and over that night before scrolling down to read the text underneith it. There wasn't much to be said about the footage; only that it was a ridiculous hoax submitted to Mysterious Mysteries by someone who called himself "Agent Mothman".
Bobby couldn't bring himself to believe the alien footage could possibly be a hoax. Not when all he had to do was look in the mirror.
For weeks afterward, he spent every night searching for this "Agent Mothman" person. Maybe he could help Bobby figure things out. Finally, he found him. Bobby had sent him an email telling him he wanted to speak with him, and that he believed the footage was not a hoax. He gave him his IM info, and told Agent Mothman he'd be waiting for him the very next night at 1:00 AM sharp. That way he could be sure Mom would be fast asleep.
If she found out, she would flip. She didn't want him to talk to others about himself. She warned him it was too dangerous. If anyone were to know just how different he was, who knows what they'd do to him.
"Just to be safe, I won't tell this guy too much about me", he'd told himself. "If I can just get him to tell me what he knows, then maybe...maybe I can know for sure if I really am a...a..."
And so tonight Bobby waited, his mom sleeping soundly upstairs. The clock struck one...
E.V.